Responsiveness and robustness in the david lewis signaling game

Abstract

We consider modifications to the standard David Lewis signaling game and relax a number of unrealistic implicit assumptions that are often built into the framework. In particular, we motivate and explore various asymmetries that exist between the sender and receiver roles.We find that endowing receivers with a more realistic set of responses significantly decreases the likelihood of signaling, while allowing for unequal selection pressure often has the opposite effect. We argue that the results of this article can also help make sense of a well-known evolutionary puzzle regarding the absence of an evolutionary arms race between sender and receiver in conflict-of-interest signaling games.